If I’m lucky, they won’t have cleaned out my locker yet.
I quicken my pace and debate if I should text Willow. She’s the only person I know who might let me crash on her couch for a night. Just one. I can’t do more than that. She has kids to worry about, and her place is small enough without me staying for long.
I nibble on my bottom lip for a second before deciding to call rather than text.
“Hello?”
“Willow? It’s Payton.”
“Payton! How are you, sweetie? Everything going okay with that guy of yours?”
“Ahh, sort of.”
“Oh no. What happened?”
I wince at that.
Of course she’ll want to know. But what can I tell her? WhatshouldI tell her? That I slept with someone in the Mafia who thinks I stole from them? And oh, they might have killed my parents after thinkingtheyalso stole from them? And I might get killed too?
That last part is all on me. No one said anything. They took me from talking to Tommy to pacing in a room with a bed and nice curtains around a window to look out. No bathroom—just a pretty cage. And the door was locked. It was a prison. Made to look pretty, but a cell for me. I stayed in there for hours. Long enough to tell the time based on the sun’s position in the sky.
When it dipped below the skyscrapers, I gave up hoping he would come to me. That it was a mistake or something. I lay on the bed, and eventually sleep pulled me under, but the second the door opened, I was up. Put in a car and driven to Tommy’s place. Given the instructions to gather my stuff and leave. That was it. For now.
They can’t possibly expect me to think I’m free to go. That everything is fine.
No. There were underlying threats. The number of people who went with me to his place. Who watched me take only what was mine. Everything was a joke. Another falseness in life. A pretense that I’m fine.
But I’m not.
They think I stole from them. I can argue all I want, but I don’t think those who go against the Mafia win. If they did, you’d see a lot more about it in the news. Instead, you hardly see anything. Because that’s what they do, right? They make things and people disappear. My parents’ murder was swept under the rug. Will mine be written off the same way? Just another random act, nothing worth looking into?
“This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have called.”
Fear that I might cause her and her kids harm rattles me into seeing reality. I can’t go to her. I can’t go to anyone. I need to run. I need to hide. Just long enough for me to accept what’s going to happen.
“Payton, it’s okay. We can talk—”
I hang up on her and walk faster. When the phone rings, I silence the call and turn off my phone. She can worry all she wants. As long as she’s there and I’m here, far away from them, they’ll be safe.
Jesus, when did my life take such a turn? Nothing will ever be what it was. And unlike last time, I have no one to turn to.
I’m running from the Mafia. The freakingMafia. The Kings won’t help me. Everyone I thought I knew left me when my parents died. And the only person I know besides Tommy needs to keep her family safe.
I only have me.
That’s it.
But will it be enough?
I use the back stairs when I enter. Not because I expect someone to turn me away from the front door, but because it’s the closest to my locker. I want to get in and out before anyone knows I’m here.
Ten minutes. I’ll only give myself that. That should be more than enough time to gather everything in my locker and go to the scaffolding and remove my rig. I bought it with the last of the money from the pawnshop before I started here. I don’t know what I’m going to do next, but I might find similar work at another club. Just till I get enough money to get out of town.
I should have left months ago. The moment my parents died, really. New York is too expensive for me. I barely survived with what I had before all this. I won’t survive it again.
Maybe I should just pawn the rigging. It might not get me much, but how much is a bus ticket anyway? I might not be able to go far enough south that a sweater isn’t needed, but at least out of the city. To maybe a no-name town that has a place willing to take me on. I could try harder at the waitress gig. Before, I thought I was desperate. But I wasn’t. Not like I am now.
Before, it was just about getting money to pay off my debt. Now it’s about staying alive long enough to pay off the Mafia. Completely different motivation in my book.
